


Merge

by wargoddess



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Control Ending, Grief/Mourning, M/M, PTSD, Sorta death, indoctrination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 17:32:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He left me behind. He left me for *you*, you fuckers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JoAsakura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Guide](https://archiveofourown.org/works/440245) by [JoAsakura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura). 



> A birthday 'fic for Jo, very loosely inspired by her tales of the posthuman Control-ending Shepard.

When everything was over, the Reapers didn’t bother to explain what had happened.  They weren’t the enemy anymore, but they were still just as arrogant as ever, and when they decided that something was beyond the comprehension of the unharvested races — as they tended to call people — they left the question unanswered.  Of course, the unharvested races weren’t nearly as stupid as the Reapers thought them.  Kaidan figured it out pretty easily, in fact.

He went back to Canada, to the family farm.  His mother had survived the war there, hunting and hiding through the fimbulwinter the Reapers had inflicted on the world when the ash of burning cities clouded the sky.  She was a tough old bird, but when all was said and done she wanted nothing more to do with the place.  _Nothing but memories and grief there_ , she’d told him, then headed off to Vancouver to help the rebuilding effort.  So it was left to Kaidan to take over the farm, and gradually restore it, and drink himself into oblivion during the long still-cold nights.

He couldn’t bear the cities, see.  Reapers were in all of them, razing rubble and raising new skyscrapers, piecing together the infrastructure they’d wrecked. _You killed my father_ , he thought, whenever he saw them. And —

— and.  Out on the farm, amid the trees and the snow, he didn’t have to look at them.  He didn’t have to think

_He left me behind. He left me for **you** , you fuckers_.

Memories and grief. Yeah.

Then there was a morning when the blare of horns like the coming of Ragnarok shook the whole house.  Terrifying.  Familiar.  The old instincts hadn’t been completely drowned by the drink; he was out of bed with the Avenger in his hands within three seconds, and beneath the window ready to fire out of cover in five. For whatever good that would do.

The Reaper was a small one, all things considered.  Just a Destroyer, only dwarfing the whole farmstead by a hundred times instead of a thousand.  Part of Kaidan, the part that was still rational, knew he should step outside, call out to it, make sure it knew he was there before it decided to flatten the farm to make way for a highway or something.  The other part of him, the part that was tired of rationality, decided _Better to go down fighting_. 

Better that, than memories and grief.

But the Destroyer just sat there.  He peeked through the window, moved to the back door and edged around the house, kept a watch for husks or whatever ground troops it was waiting on — but nothing came.  It did not flatten the farm. When finally he cursed and put on some pants and went out to see the damned thing, he was so angry that his Barrier practically sparked.  “What?” he yelled, from its feet.  It oriented its main cannon and eyespots to focus on him.  He fought the urge to shoot back at it.  “ _What_ , damn it?”

"REMAIN," it said, its voice shaking the snow off every tree in a mile radius.

And then it said nothing more.

For fuck’s sake.

He thought about leaving, if only because the thing had commanded him to stay.  Damned if he was going to obey a Reaper. But curiosity won out.

So he stayed.  And just to spite it he went about business as usual — feeding the panicked animals, repairing that leak in the roof, drinking himself into a stupor that evening, and then every evening that followed.  In a surprisingly brief amount of time, he got used to its huge, looming presence.

In an even more surprisingly brief amount of time, he began to hear whispers, then voices, in the back of his mind.

Fine, he decided, if that was the way it was going to be.  Better a swift mental annihilation than solitude and cirrhosis.  So on an evening when the voices reached a crescendo and he knew the spiderwebbing of his sanity had come at last, he went out on the balcony and raised a bottle of lager to the Reaper, for no particular reason.  Maybe it was the oncoming crazy, but he thought he saw its eyelights flicker in response.

Then he went to bed, and closed his eyes, expecting to wake up fully indoctrinated.  When he opened them again, Shepard was there, shimmering faintly and sitting on a chair beside the bed.  “Hey,” he said.

Kaidan sat up. “Hey.”  And then because suddenly, finally, he did understand, he laughed a little.  “Figures.”

"Yeah."  Shepard ducked his eyes, a little sheepishly.  "You asked me not to leave you behind."

"Right, right.  Could’ve been less _dramatic_ about it, though.”

"Yeah, I could’ve sent an extranet message, I guess. ‘Join me in a posthuman eternity of the mind. Sending a Reaper to pick you up, be ready at 8.’"  He stood, extending a hand to Kaidan.  "You never check your messages anyway."

"Oh.  Right."  When he took the hand, it was warm, solid.  Real, like the look in those eyes, and that quiet smile.  The ache that welled in Kaidan’s chest was real, too, and he swallowed it back with an effort.  "So what now?"

"Now?"  Shepard shrugged.  "Anything we want.  Anywhere you want."

"Forever?"

"Forever."

Right, then.  Kaidan licked his lips, then pointed up without looking.  “There.”

Shepard glanced up. “That’s another galaxy.”

"Can you do it, or not, big talker?"

The laugh was real, too.  Oh, God, so real. If this was madness, he wished it had come sooner, and that he might never be cured. 

“‘Course I can.”  Because Shepard could do anything. “Might take a few aeons.  Know any good travel songs?”

Kaidan gripped that hand, pulled him close, breathed aftershave and sweat and _Shepard_.  “I can think up better ways to pass the time.”

"Yeah.  Me, too."

Better this than reality, then — and anyway, reality was what they made it, right?  Better everything than nothing. Better to leave the flesh behind, and become something that could never be left behind again.  _Fuck_ memories and grief.

"Let’s get started," he said, and Shepard’s arms around him were hard and solid and good.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the grimdarkness of this. The Control ending terrifies me, because it means the safety of the galaxy is dependent on the whim of a posthuman entity that had to give up everything meaningful to her/his life* -- his lover and/or the chance of any new love, his family, his friends, even his body -- and there's no reason for such an entity to stay sane, let alone benevolent. But then I thought, the transition to posthumanity isn't death. Joasakura's fics showed me there are... possibilities, ways for even an entity so far beyond humanity to still feel as humans do. And then I figured, why wouldn't he want to take some of his old self with him? He could, after all. What is indoctrination but becoming part of the Reaper group mind?
> 
> Creepy implications, I suppose. Somewhere in the back woods of British Columbia, Kaidan Alenko's body is slowly dehydrating/starving to death -- or maybe the Reaper has sent a husk to, uh, take care of it. Hopefully the Shepard-entity remembered to signal Kaidan's mom that the farm's animals would need looking-after. But what is mere flesh, and what are mere mundanities, to newborn gods such as they? So I'm hoping the implied Happily Frickin-Forever-After diminishes the slight sour taste of bodily abandonment.
> 
> Happy birthday, chica. Everything gets better with time.
> 
> *His, in deference to JoAsakura's fics.


End file.
